As rowdy council meetings go, last Tuesday night's meeting at Waverley council to consider a plan to redevelop the Bondi Pavilion will be one to remember.

More than 200 Bondi residents, including some of its celebrities, crammed the public gallery to protest Waverley Council's plan for a $38 million redevelopment of the yellow art deco building.

The iconic pavilion at Bondi.Credit:Louise Kennerley

Their concern? That the proposed changes would involve effectively privatising the first floor of the iconic pavilion, currently mainly used by community groups, and instead hand the prime real estate with some of the best views in Sydney to private cafe and restaurant operators.

A battle to preserve public space is being fought throughout Sydney as developers push for access to prime undeveloped sites – often publicly owned – and local and state governments are tempted by the budgetary fix the proposals offer.

Advertisement

The next big battle over public land is likely to involve the Powerhouse Museum site.Credit:Powerhouse Museum

Often community concern is heightened because the approval of the project is in the hands of local or state government which has a direct interest in the project.

Waverley's formidable mayor, Sally Betts, who is driving the Bondi Pavilion upgrade, argues the building is in urgent need of a heritage upgrade, that new tourist facilities are needed, that council is not receiving sufficient return and that the plan will deliver to the community a new state-of-the-art theatre space to replace the old theatre.

But the residents beg to differ – and made their views known at the meeting by heckling and jeering throughout the meeting, prompting the mayor to walk out at one point and threaten to call police at another.

"Since the 1970s upgrade – partly funded by the Whitlam government – the Pavilion has filled the role of a local town hall come community centre while providing facilities for beachgoers," says Greens senator Lee Rhiannon​. "Under the Liberal plan, the Pavilion would become an upmarket restaurant and shopping precinct."

An artist's impression of the Crown casino at Barangaroo. Credit:Crown Resorts

Labor councillor John Wakefield said he is immensely sceptical about whether the project is in the public interest. "Labor formally moved an amendment on Tuesday night to ensure public access to the first-floor balcony, and the Liberals voted it down," he said.

The final proposal will be put to an independent planning panel but the council will shape it – and at this stage the Liberals are voting as a bloc to support the plan.

Waverley mayor Sally Betts.

In a release, Cr Betts said: "A decision on whether commercial tenancies should be included on the first floor will be made later in 2016 as well as a process of how those tenders will be undertaken."

The lure of the money and the big vision sometimes seems to impair judgment of custodians of public land.

In 2014, a master plan by the the Botanic Gardens Trust to build a cafe and viewing platform at Lady Macquarie's chair, a hotel and other developments, was nipped in the bud after former prime minister Paul Keating voiced strong opposition to the project.

The first option by the Sydney Cricket Ground and Moore Park Trust to upgrade stadium facilities at Moore Park involved a whole new stadium in the Moore Park parklands. It quickly bit the dust in favour of plan B – a new stadium on the current site, and more recently, plan C: an upgrade.

At Sydney's biggest redevelopment of public land – Barangaroo – the southern tip has been preserved as a park, but there has been ongoing pressure to increase densities at the remainder of the site.

The Barangaroo Delivery Authority says on its website that the 22-hectare site includes "11 hectares of newly accessible public domain" – but the words are carefully chosen.

When he announced the design competition in 2005, then premier Bob Carr promised that at least half the site would be park. "It will be a people's park of city workers and residents," he said.

A decade later, the 50 per cent "public domain" includes not just parks but forecourts of buildings, roads and areas of the foreshore walkway that will be leased to cafes.

The next big battle over public land is likely to involve the Powerhouse Museum site at Darling Harbour. The Baird government has said it intends to move the museum to a new home in the west but is yet to make its intention for the old powerhouse clear.

Prized public land in Paddington, one of the city's richest postcodes, is at the centre of another long-running battle between local residents, developers and the state government.

The site of the Paddington Bowling Club, which shut its doors last year after the club went into receivership, has been earmarked by a developer for a childcare centre.

But the Department of Primary Industries has already withdrawn its consent as landowner to one proposal for the centre.

Local residents fear any development would pave the way for high-rise apartments on public land.

The circumstances in which a 50-year commercial lease was granted over the public land and transferred to a private developer, CSKS Holdings, was the subject of a review commissioned by the state government and conducted by law firm Holding Redlich.

The findings, which did not allege corruption on the part of the developer, were referred to the Independent Commission Against Corruption last year but it decided not to take action.

Separately, the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority cancelled the club's liquor licence, banned eight of its former officials from sitting on club boards for two years and ordered it to pay $80,000 in costs in March after it found a string of governance failures.

Upper house Greens MP David Shoebridge, who has campaigned for the return of the land to public hands, said the decision "makes it clear the club has been operating [unlawfully], not even having the minimum number of 200 members required to be considered a proper licensed club in NSW".

Mr Shoebridge said the government should "grow a backbone" and cancel the commercial lease over the site.

A spokesman for the Department of Primary Industries' lands division told Fairfax Media: "The department is reviewing any implications of this decision but notes that the prosecution did not involve CSKS Holdings."